the Old Granny thread

[Radius Solis]

Forget necessity. In the kitchen, leftovers are the mother of invention. I just finished a meal I banged together from bits and scraps, and it was the tastiest damn dinner I've made in weeks.

Probably none of the following ingredients are critical by themselves, but in another sense, all of them are. Do as you see fit, since you will anyway. This will feed 2 - 3.

Untitled

1. Vegetation

a) Slice a red bell pepper into bite-sized pieces.
b) Do the same to some shallots.
c) Peel one to two heads worth of garlic cloves and cut off their rootbases.
d) Coat all the above in olive oil and spread flat on a baking sheet. Pieces should be all together but not heaped up.
e) Roast in the oven for 30 minutes at 300 Fahrenheit.

2. Meat/Sauce

While vegetation is roasting,

a) Finely dice half a sweet onion.
b) Slice a boneless chicken breast filet into bite-sized pieces.
c) Slice some bacon into teeny little bits.
d) In a frying pan or similar, saute onion on mediumish heat for 1-2 minutes.
e) Add bacon to onions and keep sauteeing until bacon has turned dark red or onions have turned golden brown, preferably both but don't overcook.
f) Add chicken to bacon, keep sauteeing until all chicken pieces turn white, or a couple minutes longer if pieces are bigger around than your thumb.
g) Stir in the following all at once: 2 tablespoons flour, a generous dose of Italian herb/spice blend, a teaspoon of chicken stock powder, and whatever other seasonings you may find appropriate.
h) Immediately stir in a cup of milk. Keep stirring until it simmers and thickens. Allow to simmer a few more minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Putting it together

a) On each plate, to the side a bit, place a large chunk of asiago focaccia. If you can't get that, I'm sure any other appropriate bread will do.
b) Roast vegetables go on the plate next to the focaccia.
c) Meat sauce goes on top, in the middle.
d) Sprinkle 2 oz. shredded mozzarella atop sauce, per plate.
e) A side salad would probably be good; I'll do that next time.


First person to try this (without straying too wildly from recipe) and reports back about it gets the honor of naming my new creation.

[Dewrad]

Hm. I shall try this. I can see that I'll need to make a few changes to the method, though, as I've got frozen chicken stock rather than stock powder. And I'll have to make the focaccia from scratch (which is fine, as it's my favourite bread to make). Some mushrooms would probably work well in the meat sauce as well.

[linguoboy]

Request: recipes for leftover ham that don't involve like a kilogramme of carbs in every serving.

[Dewrad]

Request: recipes for leftover ham that don't involve like a kilogramme of carbs in every serving.

What kind of ham?

[Radius Solis]

Request: recipes for leftover ham that don't involve like a kilogramme of carbs in every serving.

A) Healthier option - include it in a stir-fry. I'd probably pair it with onions and peppers, but then I do everything with onions and peppers.

B) Variety idea - ham would probably work well with a good red sauce spread atop it.

C) Heart attack option - ham and swiss lasagna. Layers of cooked lasagna noodles, thinly sliced ham, swiss cheese, and any cream-type sauce, with proportions as you prefer and baked until cheese melts. Au gratin version: top with thin layer of 50/50 breadcrumbs and grated parmesan and set oven to broil for a couple minutes at the end so they brown.

[linguoboy]

Request: recipes for leftover ham that don't involve like a kilogramme of carbs in every serving.

What kind of ham?

Bone-in city ham. (We did soak it and boil it to get out some of the salt.)

[din]

Ever since I got my boyfriend an Indian cookbook for Christmas (which I now use myself more often than he does, so it's a gift that continues giving), I've been in love with their technique of putting oil in a frying pan and putting whole seeds and such (like peppercorns, mustard seed, cardamom, fenugreek, fennel seed, etc) and things like garlic, ginger and onions into it when it's hot. You let it do its thing until for instance the garlic changes colour or the mustard seeds pop (or whatever you happen to be using), and then you go on as usual.

I find it a very good and easy way to give your meat more flavour, but it can be applied to many types of dishes. You get this wonderful, aromatic oil (which, depending on your choice of ingredients, of course) also smells amazing.

I do suppose you need an extensive spice cabinet. I counted 32 different herbs and spices (including two mixtures) in mine the other day :-/

[Dewrad]

Request: recipes for leftover ham that don't involve like a kilogramme of carbs in every serving.

What kind of ham?

Bone-in city ham. (We did soak it and boil it to get out some of the salt.)

Hm. Ham, stilton and leek tart? Still carbs in the tart base, but it's not an immense amount. Or a kind of pastryless quiche with ham, basil and sundried tomatoes? Pea and ham soup, of course, is a classic. Or a ham, chorizo and chickpea casserole, which is slightly more interesting.

Actually, if you're looking for low-carb, some kind of soup or casserole is going to be your best bet. But fuck low carb. Any diet which cuts out an entire food group is evil (take note, vegans): a life without legumes or bread is not worth living. So how about ham and feta baked in a pain de campagne-style loaf of bread?

[Radius Solis]

But fuck low carb. Any diet which cuts out an entire food group is evil (take note, vegans): a life without legumes or bread is not worth living.

Well, some of us may have important medical reasons to minimize carbs! Those who have blood sugar regulatory system disorders, say -- or certain genetic lipid-metabolism dysfunctions like mine.

[linguoboy]

Actually, if you're looking for low-carb, some kind of soup or casserole is going to be your best bet. But fuck low carb. Any diet which cuts out an entire food group is evil (take note, vegans): a life without legumes or bread is not worth living. So how about ham and feta baked in a pain de campagne-style loaf of bread?

Low-carb is not no-carb.

The quiche was a good suggestion--I should've thought of that myself. Today we made a scramble with onion and baby spinach. I wilted the spinach (30 seconds on paper towels in a microwave) so it wouldn't make the eggs soggy, and then my weak link of a boyfriend undercooks the onion so that they ended up too watery anyway. It bothered me so much that I actually tossed mine back in the pan. Not a perfect solution (wish the onion had been allowed to carmelise at least a little) but it made it taste 50-75% better.

For tomorrow, he's got plans to do a butternut soup with ham. (We've done both pea soup and lentil soup recently, so he was looking for a change.) And then he's going to use the leftover mash from Friday night to make potato-leek soup. Nummers!

[Dewrad]

The quiche was a good suggestion--I should've thought of that myself. Today we made a scramble with onion and baby spinach. I wilted the spinach (30 seconds on paper towels in a microwave) so it wouldn't make the eggs soggy, and then my weak link of a boyfriend undercooks the onion so that they ended up too watery anyway. It bothered me so much that I actually tossed mine back in the pan. Not a perfect solution (wish the onion had been allowed to carmelise at least a little) but it made it taste 50-75% better.

If you use caramelised onions frequently (and I know I do), but don't want to spend half an hour's cooking time on the damn things for every recipe, they can actually be made up ahead of time, drained well and then stored in the fridge in a sealed container for about five days or so. It's important to drain them when using them, as they tend to exude a fair bit of liquid when chilled. This is handy if you tend to use them as a condiment rather than as an integral part of (say) a mirepoix. Personally, though, I've been using échalions (banana shallots) in my mirepoix for a couple of years now, and rather prefer the taste.

For tomorrow, he's got plans to do a butternut soup with ham. (We've done both pea soup and lentil soup recently, so he was looking for a change.)

I'm not sure if this is something unique to my area of the UK, or whether it's a universal anglosphere restaurant thing, but I have come to utterly loathe butternut squash. When a chef's imagination fails, the vegetarian plate is invariably butternut squash risotto (which is bland and vile), or some kind of "mediterranean vegetable" tartlet thing. As such, when forced to do anything with the damn things, I tend to go for a butternut and parsnip soup, which has a slightly more varied and interesting flavour. I reckon that would work well with the addition of a ham stock and some finely shredded ham in it.

Radius: Granted, but you still can't justify vegans to me.

[Gulliver]

Any diet which cuts out an entire food group is evil (take note, vegans)

The day of reckoning is almost upon us; soon we will have eaten all the plants, removing oxygen producing organisms from the planet and suffocating all life on Earth. You are warned.

Anyway, I am going to make a white chocolate and raspberry/mango cake with a heart on top that bleeds coulis when cut into for Valentine's Day, because it amuses me and my manwife likes white chocolate.

Off to buy cocoa butter soon!

[Viktor77]

I made Vorí Vorí. It's a Paraguayan soup of Guaraní origin. It's a chicken soup with onion, green onion, green pepper, tomato, bay leaves, curry, and cumin. You then add little bolitas of cornmeal and cheese. It was deliciosa!

[Legion]

It was deliciosa!

And you are a simulatore.

[dhok]

I made the tastiest damn pancakes two hours ago, out of sheer improv.

Improv Pancakes
Ingredients:
1.75 cups flour (all I had on hand was cake flour, you could probably get the same result with regular_
1.75 teaspoons baking powder
0.25 cup brown sugar (or more, to taste)
0.5 teaspoon cinnamon
0.5 teaspoon nutmeg

1.25 cups milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
3 tablespoons melted butter

Mix up dry ingredients, put in liquid ingredients, then beat until there are small lumps and use as regular pancake batter.

[Astraios]

It's a sin to eat pancakes without lemon.

But mmm, cinammon.

[Skomakar'n]

American pancakes are ass. I always try to make my pancakes as thin as I possibly can when I make them.

[popisfizzy]

I just finished making a barbecue sauce, a refinement of a previous attempt, which was also my first. This batch turned out well, very well in fact, so I suppose I'll post a rough recipe here. Mind, I made this batch for jarring, so following this closely will leave you with a lot. I have a almost a full, large saucepan. I didn't measure anything out, and pretty much improv'd it, so a lot of these will be guesses and estimates. Note that it takes quite a while. I started this at about 8:20, and it's currently 2:20, so about six hours of work put it so far.

Fuckallofaname Barbecue Sauce

1. Preparation and etc.

Start with a large clove of garlic, and cut the top of it off, so that the flesh of the cloves are visible. Cut open parts of the rest of any cloves that aren't visible so that they're open to the air. Wrap up in aluminum foil, and pour a small, but decent, amount of olive oil over the top. Seal the aluminum foil top by wrapping it tightly, and put it in the oven for about two-and-a-half hours. When you can squeeze it (lightly!) and feel it give, it's ready. It should be squeezable into a paste.

At about 45 minutes till the garlic is done, start the next step. Get a large, white onion and cut it in half. Put it in a baking container with 12 ounces of orange juice concentrate. If you also have pineapple juice concentrate, do similar with a finely-chopped mango. I couldn't find pineapple concentrate, so I had to do this with pineapple juice (probably about 3 cups of pineapple juice, based on how much of it I have left), but instead I had to simmer it in a pan with the mango, and reduce it. Either way, the result should be about the same. Stir both the orange juice and the pineapple mixtures occasionally. I also poured the orange juice over top the onion as I stirred and, and started splitting the onion with the spoon as it was getting near to done, but I doubt either has much of an effect on the end result.

When the garlic, onion-and-orange juice mixture, and pineapple juice-and-mango mixture are done, add the latter two to a blender and mix until no solids are visible. Next, squeeze out the roasted garlic paste and add it, then mix until, once again, a liquid. Note that this is quite a bit, and was almost too much for my blender (a little bit too much, actually), so you may have to do it in multiple parts.

2. Starting the sauce.

Pour the blender mixture into a large saucepot, and then add three large, 28 oz. cans of tomato puree (84 oz.) and mix thoroughly, as the pineapple-and-orange-and-garlic-and-onion-and-mango mixture will sit at the top, and the puree will sink underneath. Once mixed, add about 4 tablespoons of lemon concentrate and 3/4 of a cup of apple cider. Once again, mix thoroughly. Start simmering the saucepan on low heat. Add about 1 1/2 cups of honey and 2 1/2 cups of brown sugar. If the sauce isn't hot enough, the honey and sugar will stay floating on the top of the sauce. Be sure to mix thoroughly, as the brown sugar tends to clump at the bottom.

3. Seasoning the sauce.

Next, add about 3/4 of a cup of liquid smoke (it takes a lot for a large batch), and a little under a half cup of Worcestershire sauce. Stir this on high to steam off some of the water content of the liquid smoke, and keep stirring until the sauce begins to get a bit thicker again. Next, being added the spices and seasoning and etc. I honestly can't even make a basic attempt at how much of each of the following I added measurements-wise, so I'm just gonna order it from most added to least added, approximately. Enjoy! Also, while doing this, occasionally increase the temperature and stir thoroughly. When it begins to bubble, turn it back down to low.

1) Freshly-ground black pepper.
2) Paprika, chili powder, red cayenne pepper powder, cumin.
3) Cinnamon, basil, oregano, salt, ground mustard, ground turmeric.
4) Ground parsley, lemon-pepper seasoning, crushed rosemary
5) Ground thyme, ground cloves, ground sage, ground ginger
6) Onion Powder, Garlic Powder

4. Nearing completion.

Add some starch to thicken the sauce, as it won't be incredibly thick yet. What I did was probably not necessary to the final result, but here it is: I added some roasted peppers, corn starch, water, and a little bit of oil to the blender (more starch for thicker sauce), and added it to the sauce. Increase the heat and mix it all thoroughly, and when it has an even consistency and appearance, turn the heat down on low again.

5. Finishing up! (Hypothetically*)

*I'm actually currently on this part, so part of it is hypothetical!

Turn the heat off, and mix occasionally until it is cool enough to stop releasing more steam when doing so. Add to the fridge to cool completely, and clean up. Voila! Additionally, if you made as much as I did, you may want to jar it after it's completely cooled.


The end result is a sweet sauce with a very spicy kick. I haven't had the chance to put it on anything, but I imagine it will taste quite good. I hope.

[Radius Solis]

Macaroni Salad - also known as Oh God What Do We Do With All These Easter Eggs


1. Boil 1/2 lb elbow macaroni, rinse with cold water, drain well, stick in the fridge while you do the rest.

2. Dice up the following into pea-size bits and set aside:

2 - 3 (cold, de-shelled) hard-boiled eggs
some pickled peperoncinis, or even pickled jalapenos
some peppadews
some green onions
any other stuff like this you feel like including

3. Combine the following:

1.5 cups mayonnaise
3/4 cup sweet relish of whatever brand (this is essential)
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tbsp mustard - the condiment, not the powder
generous dashes of black pepper and garlic powder
tabasco sauce, if you like

4. Mix everything from 2 and 3 into the macaroni. Serve. Leftovers should be covered tightly in the fridge. This goes well with leftover ham!

[Radius Solis]

Fiesta Chicken

It looks like a party happening on your plate and tastes like one too. Adapted from an Applebee's entree, I confess, but modified so it no longer has enough sodium to kill a bull.

1. Take some boneless chicken breast filets and halve them. Bake uncovered in an oiled/nonstick-sprayed baking dish until done, probably 30 minutes.

2. While that's cooking, boil half a pound of tricolor rotini pasta, drain and set aside.

3. If you haven't made it in advance, which I'd recommend unless you're a good time manager in the kitchen, make mexi-ranch sauce while the pasta and chicken are going. Quick version: with a blender, blend 1 part pico de gallo with 1 part sour cream*, 1 part mayonnaise, and a peeled garlic clove; add salt to taste and paprika until a nice color is reached. 2 cups mexi-ranch is about right for enough Fiesta Chicken to feed three. Leftovers are good as salad dressing or dip.

4. Grate some mozzarella, cheddar, swiss, or other nice meltable cheese, or any mixture thereof.

5. Remove chicken from the baking dish when done and drain liquid. Fill bottom of baking dish with pasta, arrange chicken atop the pasta, drown in mexi-ranch, sprinkle cheese on top. Broil just until cheese melts.

6. Serve topped with more pico de gallo and some crumbled bacon.


*This recipe relies on proper, stabilized sour cream, which does not separate or curdle and has a very thick consistency. If you can't get that, don't bother with anything else in this post.

[Radius Solis]

Enchiladas, Radius-style

Disclaimer: enchiladas (of any style) are heart attack food, not health food. Now on to business.

If you use corn tortillas like recipes always tell you to, the taste is indispensible. But corn tortillas fall apart like wet toilet paper - god only knows how restaurants manage with them - whereas flour tortillas are bland in enchiladas but hold well. So I cross-bred my enchiladas with tamales, resulting in a way to have your cake and eat it too: use flour tortillas but line them with a layer of corn masa dough. I've done it several times and it hasn't failed yet.

In the following recipe I try to provide very clear instructions, at the expense of it being much longer than you'd think would be needed for a recipe this easy.

1. Brown the meat in advance

Brown 1 lb ground chicken (or beef), breaking into lots of loose bits as you heat it. Drain, then refrigerate for an hour or until meat falls to room temperature.

2. Prepare filling

Shred 4 oz. cheddar and 4 oz. monterrey jack (or pepper jack). Combine cheese with cooled meat until well mixed. Set aside. (If you skipped the refrigeration your cheese is now a melting gooey mess. Take it from me, don't do that.)

3. Prepare dough

1 cup corn masa flour*
1/2 cup triple-strength chicken stock (1.5 tsp stock powder in half a cup of water)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Combine all ingredients until a crumbly dough is formed. With your hands, form/roll dough into a roughly cylindrical shape so you can divide it with a knife into eight equal parts.

4. Make the enchiladas

8 flour tortillas, soft-taco sized or about 8 inches across

Put the first tortilla on a flat surface. Mentally draw two horizontal lines across your tortilla, one about a third of the way from the top and the other a third from the bottom.

Place one of the eighth-parts of the masa on the middle of the lower-third line. Spread the masa out in a thin layer over the lower half of the tortilla, by pressing down with the butt of your palm in rolling motions; don't use smearing motions, it can rip the tortilla. Distribution doesn't need to be very even.

A single handful of the filling should be roughly an eighth. Place it along the lower-third line, leaving margins of an inch or so. Fold.

4a. How to fold tortillas (if you already know the technique, skip ahead)

Lift the bottom (closest) edge of the tortilla and fold it over the top of the filling until it makes contact with the upper side; if this happens lower than the upper-third line, your enchilada is underfilled. If it meets it less than an inch from the top, it's overfilled. You should now have an uneven half-moon-ish shape with a bulging flat side facing towards you. Now take the unfilled left and right margins of this shape and fold them toward each other (vertical creases) as far as they easily go. It'll rip if you pull too hard. Now you should have a uniform-width rectangular shape that bulges at the bottom and has has a rounded flap at the top - least in principle, it's never perfect IRL. Tuck in any stray bits of filling. Now fold the bulge over one more time so that it rests atop that upper flap. Done! This may sound hard, but I'm trying to be as clear as possible without a picture, and you'll get the hang of it fast. It works for any use of a tortilla, not just for enchiladas.

5. Getting it all together

Repeat step 4 for all eight enchiladas and place them in a baking pan; I find a 13x9 cakepan is about right for two columns of four each. Drown with enchilada sauce (recipe at bottom of this post) and bake in the oven 20 minutes at 350 F, you need 2 - 3 cups of sauce and it should be poured so as to fully coat all visible tortilla surfaces. Uncoated surfaces will harden in the oven, so spoon sauce over exposed parts if needed.

Serves 3 - 4 normal people or 16 dieting people.


* Corn masa flour is NOT necessarily what you would think of as "corn flour". Proper masa seca is made from nixtamalized maize and has a wonderful flavor, and using any substitute in this recipe would very much miss its point. It might or might not be easy to find, but should at least be cheap either way.

[dhok]

Introducing two breakfast sandwiches that are great any time, the Trickey and the Trickey Deluxe (both named after a friend, the inventor of the Butter Sandwich and fan of 150 pages on Facebook entitled "bacon").

The Trickey
Take two hashbrowns- the patty sort, not the cube sort. Put a small patty of butter on each one, and two strips of bacon:

Hashbrown
Butter
Bacon
Butter
Hashbrown

The Trickey Deluxe
The same as above, except for the addition of a butter biscuit, two more hashbrowns and two sausage patties:

Biscuit half
Hashbrown
Sausage patty
Hashbrown
Butter
Bacon
Butter
Hashbrown
Sausage patty
Hashbrown
Biscuit half

[Queen Xalele]

I love cooking. I just tried this out today, to great success: it's my own adaptation of a Food Network recipe. I'll include the link later, the computer I'm on now refuses to load the website.

Strawberry Rhubarb Bake

1 cup panko flakes
1 cup granulated sugar, divided into 2/3 and 1/3
2/3 cup + 2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon allspice
Chopped or sliced almonds, with skins, as desired
5 stalks rhubarb (about 4 cups), chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
4 cups sliced strawberries
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Combine the panko, 1/3 cup of granulated sugar, brown sugar, cloves, ginger, allspice and cinnamon in a bowl and whisk to combine. In another bowl, combine the rhubarb, strawberries and lemon juice; toss to coat. Add the remaining 2/3 cup of sugar and gently stir to evenly coat (take care not to crush the strawberries).

Grease a baking dish (glass/pyrex works the best, but anything will do). Lightly dust the bottom of the dish with about 3 tablespoons of the panko mixture. Top with the strawberries and rhubarb. Evenly coat the top with the remaining panko, then add almonds as desired. Bake at 325F for 15-20mins, then broil for about 5mins (monitor it well) until the almonds are toasted, the panko is golden brown and the filling is bubbling.

Serve warm with chocolate or strawberry ice cream. Also goes great with brownies.

[Radius Solis]

How to spend all day in the kitchen and impress the hell out of everyone including yourself


Step 1: In April, purchase and plant a rosemary start and some nasturtium seeds.

Step 2: Wait until you can harvest some of both, e.g. late June.

Step 3: In the afternoon, follow this recipe for fresh homemade cheese. You heard me right, homemade cheese. Despite the label it doesn't taste a lot like ricotta - it's milder, richer, and tastier, and can be improved by doubling the salt. I made it today having never done such a thing before and it turned out fantastic. The recipe is so simple even a brain-dead baboon could follow it, so no excuses! Refrigerate the cheese when it's ready, and proceed.

Step 4: Follow this recipe for homemade focaccia bread. It's among the easiest of all yeast breads, so follow the instructions and there's nothing to fear. At the stage where you sprinkle salt on top right before baking it, also sprinkle on a tablespoon or so of finely chopped rosemary from your garden. .

Step 5: Concurrently with the bread, make some kind of dinner, timed to be done at the same time. Spaghetti and homemade tomato sauce, whatever, I trust you all to figure something out - hopefully something at least vaguely Italian in order to fit in with the rest. I skipped this because we only wanted a light meal tonight but it will be part of it in the future.

Step 6: Shortly before dinnertime, construct a salad of butter lettuce, onion sliced paper thin, olives, roasted bell pepper strips (ignore the cheese and capers stuff, we just want the strips here), and nasturtium flowers picked from your garden a minute before (don't pick them too soon or they wilt). Make sure to carefully inspect the flowers for wildlife before eating them! If there's oregano and/or basil leaves available in your garden too, as obviously there should be, add some. Make a light vinaigrette dressing by blending 1/2 cup olive oil with 1/4 cup of leftover marinade from the vegetables you marinated in balsamic vinegar and white wine the day before. If some of those vegetables are still left, feel free to serve them with dinner too.

The fresh cheese, of course, is to be spread upon the still-steaming bread during consumption, this experience being the star of the show.


This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: huge success! It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

[Risla]

Such a success it was worth posting twice, eh?